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2011-11-15 Home Front: Politix

Kagan to Tribe on Day Obamacare Passed: I Hear They Have the Votes, Larry!! Simply Amazing.

On Sunday, March 21, 2010, the day the House of Representatives passed President Barack Obamas Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan and famed Supreme Court litigator and Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, who was then serving in the Justice Department, had an email exchange in which they discussed the pending health-care vote, according to documents the Department of Justice released late Wednesday to the Media Research Center, CNSNews.com's parent organization, and to Judicial Watch.

I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing, Kagan said to Tribe in one of the emails.

The Justice Department released a new batch of emails on Wednesday evening as its latest response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch. Both organizations filed federal lawsuits against DOJ after the department did not initially respond to the requests. CNSNews.com originally filed its FOIA request on May 25, 2010--before Elena Kagan's June 2010 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The March 2010 email exchange between Kagan and Tribe raises new questions about whether Kagan must recuse herself from judging cases involving the health-care law that Obama signed--and which became the target of legal challenges--while Kagan was serving as Obama's solicitor general and was responsible for defending his administrations positions in court disputes.

According to 28 USC 455, a Supreme Court justice must recuse from any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned. The law also says a justice must recuse anytime he has expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy while he served in governmental employment.

Posted by Beavis 2011-11-15 09:01|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 She must recuse or she should be impeached. The law is clear.

Posted by Crineger Grundy7664 2011-11-15 10:25|| 2011-11-15 10:25|| Front Page Top

#2 Notice that Clarice Thomas does not fit the given requirements since he did not express an opinion about it. His wife, exercising her own 1st amendment rights, did - but he did not.

Posted by CrazyFool 2011-11-15 10:41|| 2011-11-15 10:41|| Front Page Top

#3 Kagan is simply the most awful Supreme Court Justice we have ever had. She knows absolutely nothing about the Constitution.

She is a hack.

Posted by newc 2011-11-15 15:00|| 2011-11-15 15:00|| Front Page Top

#4 I IMO Kagan is dirty in this but I doubt it will be proven. Most of the conversations she had about Obamascare likely occurred off the record.

Posted by JohnQC 2011-11-15 17:00|| 2011-11-15 17:00|| Front Page Top

#5 "I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,"

I wonder if this can be construed as an opinion re health care and meets the requirements of the law requiring recusal?

Posted by JohnQC 2011-11-15 17:03|| 2011-11-15 17:03|| Front Page Top

#6 What is just as alarming is that two SES federal employees would have the horrifically bad judgment to not only make such statements in writing, but also to make them using US government computer systems, which everyone at that level knows damn well is subject to FOIA.

It's ten times worse that they are lawyers, who are required to always protect confidential and privileged communications. If these bozos aren't stopping to ask "would I paint this in neon-green 6" block letters on the side of my car?" before they hit send, they're asleep at the wheel.

Which is, in part why I'd say, meh, either way. As an ethical matter, of course Kagan should recuse herself. But she's never struck me as a hard-line ideologue, like Ginsburg, but more just naive and vapid. And utterly shocked and star-struck to be where she is. Frankly, I suspect the coercive, mandatory stuff - a government compulsion to do X, under pain of punishment - is going to bother her.

Bush 41 surely screwed up (Souter) and so did Reagan (Sandra Day O'Connor). No reason BHO shouldn't wind up with similar regrets about Kagan.

Just my $0.02.

Posted by RandomJD 2011-11-15 17:46|| 2011-11-15 17:46|| Front Page Top

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